The present invention relates to the field of food preparation and, more particularly, to a device and a method for the preparation of fluid food from formula at a desired consumption temperature, and to preparation of foods from components selected based on personal preferences and/or nutritional needs of individual users. The present invention is useful, for example, in preparing food for infants, in preparing food according to individualized nutritional requirements of individuals of all ages, and in personalized drink preparation.
The need for substitutes for mother's milk predates history with biblical and legendary references to human or canine, especially lupine, wet nurses as alternatives for mothers who were unable to nurse their babies. While wet nurses are still the alternative most approximating mother's milk, milk substitutes prepared from powdered or liquid formulas are now the preferred alternative. Most present day baby caregivers use commercially available formulas for preparing fluid food to feed the babies in their care. The use of formula generally involves the following five steps:
1. Water is heated, generally by boiling for a few seconds, and then cooled to near a consumption temperature;
2. An appropriate amount of powdered or concentrated formula is placed in a serving vessel such as a baby bottle;
3. An appropriate amount of the cooled sterilized water is put into the serving vessel;
4. A fluid food is achieved by mixing, for example by vigorous agitation of the serving vessel; and
5. The temperature of the fluid food is tested. If the temperature is not the proper consumption temperature, steps are taken to either increase or decrease the temperature of the food as may be required.
Because infants must be fed approximately five or six times a day, it is not uncommon that this process takes place in the middle of the night. Moreover, it is commonly carried out with one hand while holding a hungry and screaming infant in the other hand. As a result there is a demand for a device that quickly and easily prepares ready to consume fluid food, especially for infants. Further, as all these steps are manual, the temperature at which the food is served is not precise. Many such devices are known in the art, all with certain limitations and none that prepare, on demand, a bottle of fluid food from formula at a desired consumption temperature.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,808,276 discloses a device that attempts to solve the stated problem, by allowing a caregiver to prepare a bottle with the desired formula in advance of its need. The device therein disclosed heats and agitates an already prepared bottle of fluid food.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,352,460 provides a device for storing and dispensing liquid formula. This device employs two compartments, one for heating water and another for cooling the water by refrigeration. The device has a number of drawbacks, including not sufficiently sterilizing the water; dispensing the fluid food at too high a temperature so that it must cool in the bottle before serving. The food is therefore not ready on demand and the baby is in risk of being burned. Overheating may reduce the nutritional value of the food. Further, not all the food may be consumed. Even further, there are no provisions for the addition of any ingredients to the food beyond water and formula.
Other attempts made to address the need for prepared fluid food for infants, include:
U.S. Pat. No. 5,397,031 which discloses a device for preparing fluid food from formula at a baby's bedside. The device does not sterilize the water used, does not provide for the addition of other ingredients, and the baby must wait for the food to reach consumption temperature.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,419,445 shows a device that provides a complex method of separating the components of fluid food for convenient mixing at a later time, preferably by agitation of the bottle in order to cause the formula to dissolve in the water. It makes no provision for preparing fluid food at a desired consumption temperature.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,570,816 shows a device which only begins heating food when activated by the user, requiring the infant to wait. In addition, the device does not boil the water long enough for it to be sufficiently sterilized and it makes no provision for the addition of other ingredients to the food.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,797,313 shows a device governed by a timer which allows a user to determine when a bottle of fluid food made from formula will be ready. This is a useful feature if it is known precisely when the infant will wake up in the middle of the night. If the infant wishes to eat at times other than the set times or to consume different amounts of food at different times, the device must be activated and the infant must wait for the food to be prepared and heated to the desired consumption temperature.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,118,933 and 6,253,028 disclose a device for preparing fluid food from formula which uses filtered water, rather than boiling the water for sterilization.
PCT WO97/47224 discloses a multiple bottle preparing device which heats up a bottle of fluid food to consumption temperature when activated. This device provides certain advantages for caregivers with multiple babies to feed but still requires the infant to wait for a bottle of food to be brought to the desired consumption temperature.
There exist many other devices which mix ingredients in order to prepare fluid food which are used in the food service industry, as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,218,175; 4,139,125; 4,651,862; 4,753,370; 4,791,860; 4,993,593 and British Patent GB 2 019 813 A. These devices are not compatible with infant formula.
In addition, it is known that many infants have special nutrition needs, ranging from those with preferences for different consumption temperatures to those that require medication or other additives or specific combination of ingredients and additives in their food. A device that can individualize the composition of fluid food according to specific requirements and automatically prepare and provide that food on-demand does not exist.
It is further noted that for infants, geriatric patients, and recuperating patients and others with special needs, it would be highly advantageous to have a feedback-cycle whereby characteristics of the users (weight, activity) could be used to calculate recommended quantities of food and food additives to be provided to users. Centralized reporting and responding to such data could also be highly useful, for everything from providing clinical diagnostic information to care-givers to organizing efficient periodic re-supply of food components to liquid-food-providing machines.
There is thus a widely recognized need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have, a device for the preparation of fluid food from formula that overcomes the disadvantages of prior art devices.
With reference to adult nutrition, a variety of specialized nutritional goals has come or will soon come into public awareness. Problems of obesity and inappropriate nutrition are matters of growing concern in the field of public health. It has been estimated that 20% of the American population suffers from obesity, and the numbers elsewhere in the world appear to be increasing as well. Children and even infants are showing signs of over-eating in increasing numbers.
A large proportion of the population also suffers from inappropriate nutrition, in the sense that, while their caloric intake may be adequate or even excessive, their choice of foods fails to provide a sufficiency of various essential nutritional needs.
Additionally, both among adults and among children, populations exist which have special health or nutritional needs, these populations ranging from the very weak (e.g., elderly patients with specific nutritional needs and problematic digestions) to the very strong (e.g. professional athletes with specific nutritional requirements designed to meet body-building or other sports-related nutritional goals).
A new type of user-specific nutrition is also expected to soon come increasingly to public awareness: “nutrigenomics”, personalized nutrition based on genetic analysis of the individual, is not yet a household word, but progress being made in the analysis of genetic material to identify specific needs and predispositions of the individual, and it is to be expected that in the near future such analyses will be available to an increasingly large population, and that detailed and specific nutritional recommendations for individuals will increasingly determined on a specific person-by-person basis, based on genetic investigation of the individual as well as other sources such as physician's advice. It is likely that many such recommendations will include specific consumption of food supplements.
Thus, there is a widely recognized need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have, a device operable to receive both general information about human nutritional requirements and specific information about nutritional requirements of a particular individual, further operable to receive detailed information about that individual's current physical state, his recent or planned activities, and his recent or planned food consumption, and, based on this collected information, to design and prepare a food or food supplement tailored to the nutritional state and nutritional goals of that individual.
With respect to another aspect of human nutrition, it may be noted that existing appliances for food and drink preparation are ill equipped to provide for easy and accurate supply of food and drink where individual differences of diet and individual preferences of taste are involved. If one family member likes his coffee lukewarm with two sugars and no milk and a second family member prefers his coffee with one sugar, 20% milk and very hot, then either a family member or a paid assistance will be required to concoct the desired drinks. Thus, there is a widely recognized need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have, a device operable to prepare hot and cold drinks according to prerecorded individual preferences or according to prerecorded complex recipes of components and required actions.
It may be noted a variety of nutrients which have been found by modern nutritional science to be desirable as food additives are not in common use for a variety of reasons having to do with convenience and practicality of use, and the economics and bureaucratic complexities of introducing them into mass-consumption products. For example, with respect to the combination of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and arachidonic acid (ARA) (the combination referred to hereafter as “DHA-ARA”), there was a delay of something like five years between the discovery that DHA-ARA is of value in enhancing infant health, and the beginnings of introduction of DHA-ARA into popular baby formula products. The additive was expensive, not universally approved (Europe was faster than the U.S.A. in granting approval), and introduction of such an additive to a product line requires major changes in both production and marketing, hence introduction of this additive to mass-market informulas was subject to delay. Thus, it is not uncommon to have food additives though to be desirable by parents and/or family doctors be unavailable in commercial formula preparations.
Hand mixing of DHA-ARA into an infant formula is impractical, given that the amount of DHA-ARA to be used is extremely tiny fraction (less than 0.01%) of the amount of standard infant formula with which it should be mixed. With all additives, underdosing leads the additive to be ineffective. With some additives, overdosing may risk impair health and/or growth.
Even if DHA-ARA or a similar additive were also supplied in highly diluted form, e.g. mixed with a powder base of some sort, hand mixing of baby formula with such a diluted component would still be impractical. Dilution of DHA-ARA to the extent that the dilution might be hand-mixed with infant formula would result in the diluant used constituting and undesirably large component of the resultant mix. Yet, while a parent might mix “by eye” with adequate accuracy a 100 gram portion of one substance with, say, a 50 gram portion of another, no parent could be expected to reliably combine 100 grams of one substance with, say, 0.5 grams of something else. Thus, there is a widely recognized need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have, a method and device operable to reliably measure and supply extremely small quantities of solid or liquid ingredients, as components of a prepared infant formula or other form of prepared food or drink.